I have another report about nonworking sata_via in 2.4.25-libata9
plus the probing bug fix (so sata_via was identical to the version
in 2.4.25-libata12). The drive was not recognised with these
messages:

acpi=off and noapic options did not help. However, replacing
sata_via.c with the version from 2.4.25-libata1 (with removed
".phy_config = pata_phy_config" line to make it compile) allowed the
detection to succeed.

I tried to replace ATA_FLAG_SATA_RESET with ATA_FLAG_SRST in the new
driver - with this change detection also succeeds: